First Fallout 4 Beta Patch to Release Next Week

Demagogue

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Mar 26, 2009
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Wow... 8 escapist articles linked in that small of an article. 338 words total.. 39 of which link to other escapist articles. That's 11% of this being fluff (and that's literally just the hyperlinked words, not all Lizzy's additional wording to make proper sentences and such)

OT - I probably won't opt into the beta patches myself, as I haven't been having too many issues, but glad to see they're hard at work catching things. Also
IceForce said:
All of what IceForce said. This isn't a shooter on rails, its an extremely open ended game. QA simply cannot fathom all the different ways the players will play the game it is impossible. Between my friends and I so far playing it (which is 5 of us) None of us have played things in the same way or order. We are a small anecdotal sample, but if 5 of us that hang out and chat throughout playing can't even play the game the same way, then what are the odds that the 12 millions players are playing the same way?
 

Often

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Tanis said:
So now they FINALLY admit that they release their games before proper testing is done so PAYING customers can do it for them.
Or you could actually read the article and see where they pointed out that they do have a QA staff who worked hard to break the game but that as many as they have, it's never going to be enough to simulate the millions of ACTUAL players.

But hey, that's not as fun as randomly bitching.
 

Steve the Pocket

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"...a hundred testers will never replicate the many millions playing the game now..."

This is true, and I wish people would get it through their skulls. HOWEVER:

"...and we're hard at work addressing the top issues."

This is probably also true, but for how long? Bethesda is infamous for two things: Making games that are riddled with weird bugs, and leaving some of those bugs unfixed forever. Valve, in contrast, is another company regularly described as "using their players as beta testers", but when they put out an update that introduces a major bug into one of their games, they almost always patch it out within a couple of days. Meanwhile, Bethesda, as often as not, expects their customers to take care of fixing bugs as well as finding them - there are numerous mods out there for various Elder Scrolls and Fallout games that exist solely to fix bugs, and Bethesda hasn't so much as bought them out and patched them into the base game. To this day, Fallout 3 and New Vegas cause random crashes to desktop for many people for reasons the community has still never figured out. There are a couple fixes you can use to cut down on them, but you can never be rid of them for good.
 

Naldan

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Fingers crossed that I still can play it on "high" with my Phenom II X4 965 BE after the patch.

When they patched Skyrim and I still had my GeForce 260 back then, it became unplayable on any setting after a certain patch. Appearantly, they made shader settings mandatory from one patch to another.

Just fix the settler AI and settlement stats, please...
 

socialmenace42

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scotth266 said:
I'm slightly amused by the disparity certain developers receive in their treatment by gamers when it comes to the amount of bugs in their games. Fallout 4 is allowed to have multiple stupid bugs because "it's a Bethesda game", but people righteously raked Ubisoft over the coals for AC:Unity. I think it shows just how far the bar has sunk when people genuinely got upset that Totalbiscuit flamed the game for being buggy when he played it.
I understand the complaint, but I think there's more to it than just Bethesda rulz, Ubisoft seeeerks'
AC Unity was dissappointing in a number of ways; the gameplay was't up to snuf, the story was convoluted, the characters were pale and two dimentional, but more than that it was yet another full game release served up with on disk DLC, pre-order exclusives, microtransactions designed to frustrate you into spending more money and on top of that on release the game was for many people all but unplayable.

With Bethesda games like Fallout 4 and skyrim we look past the buggy glitched out launch phase because we're not playing some bland yearly released shovelware brought out by a company clearly more interested in making a quick buck than generating a decent product; Bethesda sells these games on the promise that even though they can't guarantee the game will run perfectly when it comes out it will still be a solid enormous experience containing hours of entertainment without even thinking about the main quest line.

I still remember dealing with backwards flying dragons in skyrim and waiting for ages for Bethesda to finally patch the issue and yes; that frustrated me. But i accepted it as an understandable result of the development of a huge game world that you can't always find everything that's wrong.
 

Gone Rampant

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They'd better not fix the merchant glitch, since like fuck am I blowing ten grand on ammo and gear when most of my stuff sells for less than a hundred.
 

Thyunda

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Charcharo said:
Considering that many of the issues have been present in the games since at least Fallout 3 and others since Oblivion...

I call BS. Just laziness.
Oh hey it's you again. Ayup mate, how's it going?

I'll tell you what bug is present in Fallout 4 that's in bugger all else. That bloody VATS Stimpak bullshit. You go to shoot some fucker through VATS and for literally no reason at all, your guy looks the enemy square in the eye and shoots up with an aggressive sigh. It's messed up and actually frightening that my character is so comfortable with shooting up in front of everyone.

Only that's the only issue I've had. In Fallout 3, I once went jumping around some rocks and found a hole the exact size and shape of my power armour and got neatly wedged in it. Haven't had that issue in 4 yet.


I tend to give Bethesda at least a little bit of a pass because of the sheer breadth of their games. I feel like I'm cutting out half the game if I fast-travel anywhere because the fun is in the random events that happen when you go for a stroll. That's gotta be nearly impossible to test, so unless there's a really obvious, really shitty bug ruining the game, I'm hardly going to go on the offensive.
The real question is whether or not CD Projekt Red fixed Skellige's Most Wanted, yet. Now that's a real bug that impedes progress in the game.
 

Thyunda

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Charcharo said:
Thyunda said:
Charcharo said:
Considering that many of the issues have been present in the games since at least Fallout 3 and others since Oblivion...

I call BS. Just laziness.
Oh hey it's you again. Ayup mate, how's it going?

I'll tell you what bug is present in Fallout 4 that's in bugger all else. That bloody VATS Stimpak bullshit. You go to shoot some fucker through VATS and for literally no reason at all, your guy looks the enemy square in the eye and shoots up with an aggressive sigh. It's messed up and actually frightening that my character is so comfortable with shooting up in front of everyone.

Only that's the only issue I've had. In Fallout 3, I once went jumping around some rocks and found a hole the exact size and shape of my power armour and got neatly wedged in it. Haven't had that issue in 4 yet.


I tend to give Bethesda at least a little bit of a pass because of the sheer breadth of their games. I feel like I'm cutting out half the game if I fast-travel anywhere because the fun is in the random events that happen when you go for a stroll. That's gotta be nearly impossible to test, so unless there's a really obvious, really shitty bug ruining the game, I'm hardly going to go on the offensive.
The real question is whether or not CD Projekt Red fixed Skellige's Most Wanted, yet. Now that's a real bug that impedes progress in the game.
Far Cry 4 is decent. I find it fun so far. That is how it is going.

That is not really so much of an issue to be frank.

I was referring to the UI issues. As well as the repeatable mistakes in the options menus.

You should not give them leeway. Do you give Ubisoft a bit of a pass? They make big games too. Or CDPR when their games are just as (well... probably much more) technologically ambitious? Did people give GSC Game World a pass for some of the most ambitious games ever conceived? No. Not really.
Did they learn from their mistakes? Well, yeah they all did... except Ubi.
Far Cry 4 is decent. But that's all it is. It's let down by the Radio Free Kyrat DJ who is mandatory listening for vehicles in 'liberated' areas and he has only three lines. That's annoying. I also find the whole 'climb the radio towers to unlock new areas' to be dull and repetitive. And lazy. And how can you say the stimpak problem isn't an issue? Do you have any idea how many times I've died because my last-ditch headshot turned into a stimpak animation? I don't even think it heals me. It just takes up time and gets me killed.

And I give Ubisoft a pass depending on the game. Unity didn't get a pass because I played it on Xbox One and not only was it buggy as all fuck, it was just shit. The story was shit. The characters were shitter. The controls felt like Arno was trying to swim through dough, and the multiplayer was a joke. A massive fucking joke. During that whole 'can't play as women' debacle before Unity's release, the justification was that you're not playing a custom Assassin, you're playing as Arno. All four of you. Then the game came out and the multiplayer missions were one-shot scenarios that had no reason to include Arno whatsoever.

Rogue got a pass on a few of its issues because the end result was enjoyable. I even forgave Shay's amusing pronunciation of 'Galway,' and the other mistakes regarding his accent his actor made - because "I make my own luck" was such an enjoyable phrase.

The difference between us though is I literally cannot bring myself to care about the issues you claim to have had. It's akin to saying "I hated The Lord of the Rings because the text was too small," or "I respect Samuel K. Cohn Jr's credentials as a historian but the cover art for The Black Death Transformed is just a joke. Literally unreadable."

And it irks me that you refer to the developers as lazy. When's the last time you embarked on a project with a six-year turnaround? When's the last time you spent six years doing anything? Worse still, it implies that you believe Bethesda's staff to be totally devoid of creativity or passion for the project and cut corners for money - but obviously they wrote to you first to find out which corners they could cut and successfully only upset you in particular.

What makes it even better is I only understood roughly fifty per cent of that complaints post you copied and pasted all over the forum. Most of the words were totally unfamiliar to me - which shows the level of effort you've gone to, to be offended by Bethesda.
 

Thyunda

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Charcharo said:
If it gets you killed... well damn, worse than I thought it seems.

I do not give Ubisoft a pass. Never. And the " shit story, shit characters" thing is applicable to almost all of Bethesda's games. They all have mediocre storylines with bad-mediocre characters and no thematic coherence. So in this exact comparison, they are no better than Ubisoft's Unity.

I do not give a pass to technological laziness and incompetence just because the end result may be a good game. Have I stated Fallout 4 is not a good game? It is... just one coded by idiots :p Hence my complaints.

Another difference between us is that I actually can bring myself to care about your issues. Generally low FOV is no issue to me, but I STILL cared about people who have it as a problem. It is an OBJECTIVE issue in the game, one that a Bethesda employee could have EASILY remedied. By making it into the menu. So... simple.
And that is just an example. Mouse Acceleration is completely unbearable to me. So it affects me. It has its reason to exist though and some people do not find it hard to play with. Good for them. Why not make it into the menu too?

These are known things PC Gamers want. Simple things, especially when the engine can do them no problems at all. And easy to implement. And known issues from previous Bethesda games. So... if it is not laziness or incompetence... what is it then?
Well I don't even know what mouse acceleration is so I can't answer that question. But I do know that Bethesda's storylines and characters are a damn sight more interesting than Unity. Not that this is a conversation we can have, because you refuse to acknowledge video game stories or plots as valid media, so we'll just have to settle this by saying "the books for the Assassin's Creed series are godawful."

And scene.
 

happyninja42

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Sooo, all the apparent arguing aside, what would you all like to see addressed in this upcoming patch? Any particular specific issues that irk you the most?

(If this has been presented already in the discussion, my apologies for repeating this comment. If the last several posts before this one are any indication of the thread momentum though, I'm guessing it's not an issue.

Personally I'd like to see them fix a bug I've encountered with the recruitment beacon for settlements. I turn them off, they stay on, still attracting more people. Sometimes just flicking the switch a few times will work, sometimes I have to actually shut down the generator itself to stop the transmission, or simply store the tower in the workshop. Which while not a big issue, is annoying.

Fix Deacon's hair! So I started running around with this guy as a companion, and he's great. I'm enjoying the hell out of him, one problem though, graphically, he will frequently switch his look. This might be on purpose, given his background a bit, but I doubt it. I will see him with his pompadour hairstyle, and then run a few hundred yards, turn around, and he's smooth bald, also wearing a different outfit from his inventory. Then next time I look around, he's got on a newsboy cap, and then back to bald again later. Not sure if this is a common issue for all companions, or just Deacon, but I find it highly annoying when trying to talk to him. xD
 

Thyunda

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Charcharo said:
Thyunda said:
Charcharo said:
If it gets you killed... well damn, worse than I thought it seems.

I do not give Ubisoft a pass. Never. And the " shit story, shit characters" thing is applicable to almost all of Bethesda's games. They all have mediocre storylines with bad-mediocre characters and no thematic coherence. So in this exact comparison, they are no better than Ubisoft's Unity.

I do not give a pass to technological laziness and incompetence just because the end result may be a good game. Have I stated Fallout 4 is not a good game? It is... just one coded by idiots :p Hence my complaints.

Another difference between us is that I actually can bring myself to care about your issues. Generally low FOV is no issue to me, but I STILL cared about people who have it as a problem. It is an OBJECTIVE issue in the game, one that a Bethesda employee could have EASILY remedied. By making it into the menu. So... simple.
And that is just an example. Mouse Acceleration is completely unbearable to me. So it affects me. It has its reason to exist though and some people do not find it hard to play with. Good for them. Why not make it into the menu too?

These are known things PC Gamers want. Simple things, especially when the engine can do them no problems at all. And easy to implement. And known issues from previous Bethesda games. So... if it is not laziness or incompetence... what is it then?
Well I don't even know what mouse acceleration is so I can't answer that question. But I do know that Bethesda's storylines and characters are a damn sight more interesting than Unity. Not that this is a conversation we can have, because you refuse to acknowledge video game stories or plots as valid media, so we'll just have to settle this by saying "the books for the Assassin's Creed series are godawful."

And scene.
Here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16diwK6HWbI

More interesting? Maybe. Better? Not really.

" you refuse to acknowledge video game stories or plots as valid media,"
And do not put words in my mouth. I never, EVER stated such a thing. That is not something I ever said. You might have misunderstood some of my posts. But that is not what they equate to... not even close.
Oh sorry it must have been a different guy who complained a lot about Bethesda being lazy and how any non-literature medium can only ever be mediocre at best. My mistake.
 

IceForce

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Happyninja42 said:
Fix Deacon's hair! So I started running around with this guy as a companion, and he's great. I'm enjoying the hell out of him, one problem though, graphically, he will frequently switch his look. This might be on purpose, given his background a bit, but I doubt it. I will see him with his pompadour hairstyle, and then run a few hundred yards, turn around, and he's smooth bald, also wearing a different outfit from his inventory. Then next time I look around, he's got on a newsboy cap, and then back to bald again later. Not sure if this is a common issue for all companions, or just Deacon, but I find it highly annoying when trying to talk to him. xD
Pretty sure this all is deliberate, and not a bug. The 'hair' he wears occasionally is actually a wig. I used the command console to check his (hidden) inventory ("50976.inv" , if you're interested), and he's got a bunch of different clothes in there, including at least one wig.

So yeah, he keeps changing his appearance on purpose.